


A Guilty Memory for the Wayward Thrall

by Pendles_is_friendles



Series: Alls the Thralls [6]
Category: Battleborn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Angst having to do with tiny alien babies, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 03:24:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17439032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pendles_is_friendles/pseuds/Pendles_is_friendles
Summary: Nearly a year after visiting Vocatia, Mortus tells the reader, listening through a holopad, the story of what happened in that time.





	A Guilty Memory for the Wayward Thrall

**Author's Note:**

> Small note to consider: Mortus calls anyone from the LLC "fancy folk". He knows they're LLC and probably scientiests, but he tends to simplify things, especially when he's tired.

“Do I got to?” Mortus asked his curious holopad with a pout as he poked at his campfire. The thick iron pipe in his hand was a quality prize from his scavenging, along with the cast iron grate propped over the fire thanks to two rocks. He grumbled under his breath, his brow ridges furrowed in grumpy contemplation. Rotating the roasting vegetables over the grate, he coughed to clear his throat. Judging from his towering height and chubby figure, the meager offerings he scrounged from the ground of Ekkunar would not be enough. Despite the hint of chill in the air, the gigantic thrall only wore his shorts; a large black hoodie emblazoned with the line "I don't care about your stupid boner" hung from the end of a broken branch, still dripping from a forage in the river. “Oh fine… it’s not like keepin’ this all to m'self would help anyways…”

“So, workin’ fer Arum was an easy gig for the most part. Keep the wrong folks out, bring the right ones in, go lookin’ for thin’s the right folks might want; easy.“ He licked the juice off of his warm fingers, focusing his attention on the flames instead of his holopad. “So, most of me time was spent out in the dark searchin’ for thin’s. Trinkets, metal, tech, simple thin’s. Not livin’ thin’s.” A rumbling sigh rolled through him as his voice lowered. Shoulders lowering, his head ducked as close as it could into the meat of his neck. Ghostly eyes cast a sidelong glance into the darkness before refocusing on the flames.

“One trip, I’d been glidin’ in an uncharted section for a few days, findin’ nothin’. I had started to think the Rogues or the Lorrians cleared it out when I found a funny-lookin’ ship.” Now that his food had charred just right, he picked up the red-hot grate with his bare hand and set it aside, a frown pulling on the corners of his bottom lip as the memory of finding that dark alien wreckage beyond the reach of the last star, Solus. 

“It weren’t sharp like a Viper or round like those fancy folks’s… it were like a fish… kinda. Dockin was hard ‘cause nothin' was compatible, but it wasn’t somethin’ I didn’t know how to fix." Some foam sealant to make a seal and ensuring the whole thing was air tight came natural to the former pilot, partially thanks to experience and also partially thanks to the cybernetic device that replaced most of his spine. "After I crawled through the door on me belly, thinkin’ there would just be some sort of weird tech or somethin’, I heard the squeakin’… a whole bunch of it.“ He held his generous palms up, as if cradling a several litters of small kittens. “There were a whole ton of them. Just these tiny little wads of squeaky noodles, just like the little baby dragons from the books.”

A ghost of a smile crossed his cracked face. 

“They were all alone. The pilot was nothin’ but bones and the little dragons looked so thin. So I scooped them up and took them back with me. What else could I do? They would’ve died out there.” He poked at the cooling food with a sigh. The memory of their skinny spaghetti arms hardly able to grasp his fingers and wrists brought a bittersweet ache to his soul. In the service under the Imperium, he was never allowed to love anything; he was not sure what it could feel like.

But, he knew he loved those dragons as soon as he picked them up.

“They liked to climb all over me and they’d stick out their forked tongues." His eyes squinted, turning into thin slits of silver in the dark patches of skin, as he stuck out his tongue like a snake to demonstrate. Still, as his face relaxed, the hint of a grin remained, his golden teeth catching the glint from the fire. "Sometimes I could feel them in me hood or me pocket but they wouldn’t be there 'til I poked them. It was funny, they would just disappear whenever they wanted."

"I had them for a few months before I was helpin’ escort some of the fancy ones to a meetin’ with the boss. One of the dragons was squeakin’ and hummin’ up a storm in me sleeve. Stealin' a second of privacy, I took a peek in just to see his face all grumpy. I figured he was just hungry, but I couldn't exactly run off to tend to him right away. So to distract him until we could get back to me quarters, I just let him hang on me horn like he usually liked to do so he could see what was goin’ on.”

Mortus's smile died and his eyes dimmed.

“When I came back, the rich guys were real interested in him all of a sudden. I didn’t know wot for...” His gaze flicked to the holopad, pleading for understanding. Arms crossing over his chest, he leaned forward to rest against his knees. If only a giant could collapse into himself, Mortus would have in that moment. However, he continued his solemn story, his deep voice reduced to a low mumble. “They said they knew what Roa needed. They said they would take care of them and Arum said the pay day would be worth it! That I was hurtin’ them by keepin’ them with me. Arum said a Thrall couldn’t hope to raise a few hundred Roa… said we was too stupid for it. Well so... I gave them up. I just wanted them to be happy, I figured that the fancy folks wanted the same.”

“It didn’t feel right. I kept thinkin’ whether they were goin’ to get pet the right way or bein’ cuddled or fed the right fish… or even to watch out for the one that'd rather eat the tongs instead, but I didn’t get to tell them nothin'. I didn’t know what they were really doin’…”

Ekkunar's jungles brought a quiet peace Mortus had not been privy to in years. Not since before his tour of Darkening Codex.

Mortus wiped his nose, holding his head up to hide his face with his horn. His breath shuddering as he continued, “then, Arum says they found another one… and sent me off to go collect him. Randy had slipped somethin' rough in his drink, leavin' me the dirty work of transportin' his limp body from that bar back to the base. This one was big, compared to the others at least. And he was missin’ an eye… but he was one of them. And he talked…”

“I was supposed to keep watch… but I couldn’t stay and look at him. It'as different than other times, it didn’t feel good knowin’ I’d sold someone’s pups.“ The meat of his palm rubbed against his eye, but it did nothing to stem the river of tears freely pouring down his face. “Knowin’ Arum was plannin’ on sellin’ a someone too… it just didn’t sit right with me. I went off to my quarters to read. I figured with him drugged n’ tied up, I didn’t have to stay and I needed to think 'bout why I was even workin' for them."

The high tech machine along Mortus' back and his status as a brute meant he had intimate knowledge of what the wrong laboratory would do to a valuable, sentient being. A constant buzz at the back of his skull, feeding his mind a slurry of useful information about the tech nearby, the metals around and whether the latter could be used to fix the former. It was tiring.

"When I came back to check on him, he was gone and the rest of me crew was torn to shreds…” Mortus shook his head, the sight of his once comrades melted and decapitated burned into his memory. No one was supposed to get hurt. He never wanted to get anyone hurt. “I just left at that point… I wasn’t about to put m'self between that snake and his babies.“

“Now, he still hunted me down, eventually. I don’t know how he got me, but he managed to drag me into one of the deepest holes of Ekkunar. What happened down there’s… not important…" Mortus' legs and wrists still ached from hanging several feet off of the floor; he must have left a few inches taller. His hand raised to cover his shoulder. Across the sun kissed green skin laid the pockmarked scars where the tubing filled his bloodstreams with venom. "But what is important was that he was furious. He wanted to know why we went after him… I couldn't answer him 'cause I didn't know. And I was weak from whatever he used on me… so even with all me size and strength, I couldn't do nothin' to get m'self out of there. I lost track of the days.“

“But one day, he just let me go… sayin’ I’d ‘repaid me debts’. That ‘sellin’ his species weren’t free’. Since this was the first I heard him say anythin’ ‘bout the little ones, I asked 'bout them. Maybe he’d seen them, you know?” He tried to hide wiping the stream of tears down his face pretending to scratch the side of his nose. “He said they were gone, and I don’t know what he meant by tanks n’ tubes, but… I don’t think those fancy folk that bought them took care of them.” Mortus shook his head. “I should’ve said no. I wouldn’t have let them die. They were happy with me. Arum was wrong, this Thrall could’ve taken care of them, dammit.” Silvery eyes flashed as he thumbed himself in the chest. As his voice raised, the ground and trees vibrated from the volume; a furious growl laced the deep bass of his voice.

The rage melted into a glacial rumble as he forced himself to calm down. What good could his anger do right now? “But I’m the one that made the decision to send them off, I regreted it then and… I regret it more now. I just wanted to work 'til I could sell me figures. I just wanted to help the babies and… I still let them down. I just want… to do somethin’ right. I wonder if there are more or if Pendles knows somethin’ I don’t.” The deathly glow of Mortus’ eyes shifted as he let his focus drop. “I just got to ask him, which hasn’t been easy. But, I’ll just have to figure it out, somehow.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a collection of fics circling a handful of OCs of mine. Most were previously posted on Tumblr, but are being edited, reworked and reposted here for your reading pleasure. There's a lot more where this came from.
> 
> This was originally from a prompt asking for a guilty memory for Mortus, but it ended up being pivotal for telling his side of the greater story.


End file.
